Will County State’s Atty. James Glasgow returned a $500 campaign contribution Monday to a Joliet company owned partly by developer George Barr, whose relationship to the county’s chief executive officer is under investigation by the prosecutor.
Glasgow also said he will return all contributions given to him in the last few years by the man who wrote the check from the Barr-owned company, Joliet attorney Ira Goldstein.
Goldstein, a prominent Joliet lawyer whom Glasgow described as a longtime friend, was secretary of the Barr Foundation during the time that Barr used the charitable organization to lend $115,000 to Will County Chief Executive Officer Charles Adelman.
The Illinois attorney general, Illinois State Police and Glasgow began investigating Adelman’s financial dealings last winter after the Tribune revealed that Adelman had voted on a $10 million tax break for a racetrack partly developed by Barr.
Glasgow said he did not know Goldstein was connected to the Barr Foundation. But he said he would tally up Goldstein’s contributions since 1997, when the Barr Foundation lent Adelman money.
“Whatever it is, it will be refunded immediately,” Glasgow said. “I had no personal knowledge of this.”
The issue was raised Monday by Glasgow’s opponent in the Nov. 7 election, Republican Jeff Tomczak.
“I think this is a slight lapse in Jim’s ethical standards, if they were willing to accept that check from Ira Goldstein,” he said.
Goldstein gave the check drawn on a Triumph Manufactured Home Sales Inc. bank account during a fundraiser for Glasgow.
Goldstein said he wrote his own name at the top of the check to indicate that it was a personal contribution from him, not a corporate gift from the Barr-owned company. Goldstein said he and Barr each own half of the company, which supplies mobile homes for a mobile home park the men also own together.
He said he had just returned from a vacation Friday and went to Glasgow’s fundraiser without a checkbook from his personal or law-firm accounts. He said he had intended to reimburse the business account later.
Glasgow said it was obvious that he should not accept money from Barr, but he said he did not realize that Goldstein was an officer of the foundation, which was created by Barr’s father to supply prosthetic limbs to people who cannot afford them.
Goldstein said he had a very limited role as the foundation’s secretary.
“We would meet once a year, take some notes and give them … to be typed up and sent to the board of directors,” he said. “I never even knew he loaned money to Adelman.”
Goldstein resigned from the position in March, shortly after Barr also stepped down from the foundation.
